All images by Scott Douglas
by Mia Phillips
The door to the Scott Douglas Gallery is kept slightly ajar, functioning as a subliminal message, wordlessly welcoming any passersby. Upon entering the cozy basement space that used to house the Hutson Gallery, one is met with Douglas’ work lining the white walls, illuminated under spotlights. Next to his ceramic sculptures is a sign that says, “please touch.” Nothing is out of place, and nothing is without a purpose.
Currently, he has three collections on display: Faggot, Gloryhole, and Joyful Beings. Purposefully provocative, Douglas hopes audiences will identify with the personal subject matter. “What’ll end up happening is they’ll share their story, and it gives them an opportunity to say how they related to the work.” Douglas continues, “It creates a sense of belonging.”
Despite being a self-identified introvert, Douglas wants his work to inspire discussions and connections. “I’ve had great conversations here about what’s on the walls. That’s what I get the most out of.”
The presentation of his work in the gallery resembles that of a museum, his pieces accompanied by titles and philosophical blurbs meant to inform and contextualize. Douglas has curated the exhibit experience by paying careful attention to reactions, never taking them to heart, but to the drawing board. He says, “That is so important to an artist, to be able to listen to objective feedback—not criticism necessarily, because when you hear it as criticism, then you’re not open. It’s just feedback on how someone’s reacting to it. Then, understanding that that’s what your work made them experience.”
Before opening his gallery two years ago, Douglas had earned a degree in linguistics. In the last semester of his program, he enrolled in an elective clay class. “I just connected immediately,” says Douglas. Apart from his college clay class, Douglas has studied under various master potters and sculptors, partaking in weeklong summer seminars hosted by Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. In addition to the seminars, experimentation and failure both played instructive roles in Douglas’ journey with ceramics, providing lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. When asked how much trial and error it took to get him to the level he is at now, he says “a lot.”
In the future Douglas hopes to share his gallery spotlights with other potters and sculptors, with the hope to provide a space where they, too, can cultivate reactions and connections from their audience. “I finally have the opportunity, so I’m getting all of this creative juice out of my system that I’ve had built up for over a decade, but eventually I want it to be half and half,” he says.
For 30 years, his occupation was producing functional molds and pottery for production design. Douglas’ life as a mold maker required a strict step-by-step process to achieve the final result. “Everything had to be laid out. You look at what you want the finished product to be, you have the finished product, and you make a mold of it. Everything is strategically planned,” he says. Now, intuition and creative flow are Douglas’ top priorities when constructing his work; any distractions of expectation are carefully eliminated. His new non-functional approach to pottery opens his work up to being experienced instead of commodified, and he no longer feels the pressure to keep up with supply and demand.
“If I had to sell ten a week, it wouldn’t work. That allows me to play,” he says. A new purpose requires a new approach. “I created this process where I make sticks out of clay, and they dry and then I have a pile of them. Then one day I’ll go, ‘What am I going to make today?’,” says Douglas. “It’s all made up as I go, what feels right.” Unlike the past 30 years, today working transports him back to his days as a boy playing with tinker toys, putting them together and breaking them down in any way he saw fit.
The process he describes eventually results in a piece belonging to his Joyful Beings collection, an assortment of humanlike creatures with exaggerated limbs, alien heads, propped up in playful positions. “It’s all intentional,” says Douglas. The exaggerated limbs stretched out to impossible lengths express the amount of joy the beings represent. The heads are designed to draw attention to the bodies; one is forced to take note of what is carrying the head because the face has no distinct features. Douglas explains the concept as “let’s take the human form and manipulate it and see how far we can do that and still maintain a humanness that you can relate to. He adds, “these heads don’t allow you that connection, so that you see the rest of the work to interpret the emotion and the feel. And so, you focus on the form and what the hands are doing and the shape of the body.”
The theme of joy found in this collection stems from Douglas’ personal beliefs on the concept, which he has displayed in a poetic paragraph accompanying the work. According to Douglas, “you can’t maintain a sense of joy until you see it and recognize it in others and accept their reality, even if they don’t have their joy.” He explains, “it’s more of a humanistic way of thinking about joy, and being purposeful about it,” he finishes his thought by saying, “do it with intent.”
Scott Douglas Gallery is located at 432 Commercial St., lower level, Provincetown. For more information stop by afternoons, Thursdays through Sundays or on Fridays, 5 – 8 p.m., or visit @scottdouglasworks on Instagram.
